Summary

The fight with Covey causes Douglass to regain his spirit
and defiance, as well as his resolve to be free. He never receieves
a whipping from anyone during his remaining four years as a slave.
Douglass’s year with Covey ends on Christmas Day, 1833.
It is customary for slaves to enjoy a holiday from Christmas to
New Year’s. Slaveholders typically encourage slaves to spend the
holiday drinking, rather than resting or working industriously for
themselves. Douglass explains that this strategy helps keep blacks
enslaved. By giving slaves a brief span of time each year to release
their rebellious spirit, slaveholders keep them manageable for the
rest of the year. By encouraging them to spend the holiday riotously
drunk, slaveholders ensure that freedom comes to seem unappealing.

On January 1, 1834, Douglass is
sent to live with Mr. William Freeland. Mr. Freeland, though quick‑tempered,
is more consistently fair than Covey. Douglass is grateful that
Mr. Freeland is not a hypocritically religious man. Many men in
the community profess to be religious, but merely use their religion
as justification for their cruelty to their slaves.

Freeland works his slaves hard, but treats them fairly.
Douglass meets and befriends other slaves on Freeland’s property,
including the intelligent brothers Henry and John Harris. Sandy
Jenkins also lives at Freeland’s at this time, and Douglass reminds
readers about Sandy’s root and reports that Sandy’s superstition
is common among the more ignorant slaves.

Douglass soon succeeds in getting some of his fellow slaves
interested in learning how to read. Word soon spreads, and Douglass surreptitiously
begins to hold a Sabbath school in the cabin of a free black. This
is a dangerous undertaking, as educating slaves is forbidden; the
community violently shuts down a similar school run by a white man.
Yet the slaves value their education so highly that they attend
Douglass’s school despite the threat of punishment.

Douglass’s first year with Freeland passes smoothly. Douglass remembers
Freeland as the best master he ever had. Douglass also attributes
the comfort of the year to his solidarity with the other slaves.
Douglass recalls that he loved them and that they operated together
as a single community.

Though Douglass remains with Freeland for another year
in 1835, by this time he desires his freedom
more strongly than ever. Here Douglass puns on the comfort of living
with “Freeland” as his master and his stronger desire to live on
“free land.” Douglass, resolving to attempt an escape sometime during
the year, sets about offering his fellow slaves the chance to join
him. Douglass recalls how daunting the odds were for them. He describes
their position as facing the bloody figure of slavery and glimpsing
the doubtful, beckoning figure of freedom in the distance, with
the intervening path full of hardship and death. Douglass points
out that their decision was far more difficult than that of Patrick
Henry, whose choice between death and an oppressed life—“Give me
liberty or give me death”—was merely rhetorical. As slaves, Douglass
and his companions had to choose doubtful liberty over nearly certain
death.

The escape party consists of Douglass, Henry and John
Harris, Henry Bailey, and Charles Roberts. Sandy Jenkins initially
intends to accompany them, but eventually decides to remain. They
plan to canoe up the Chesapeake Bay on the Saturday before Easter.
Douglass writes travel passes, signed by their master, for each
of them.

On the morning of their planned escape, Douglass works
in the fields as usual. He soon feels overcome by a sense that their plan has
been betrayed. Douglass tells Sandy Jenkins of his fear, and Sandy
feels the same way. During breakfast, William Hamilton and several
other men arrive at the house. They seize and tie Douglass and the
rest of the escape party. The men transport their prisoners to Thomas
Auld’s house. On the way, Douglass and the others speak together,
agreeing to destroy their written passes and admit nothing.

At Thomas Auld’s, Douglass and the others learn that someone has
betrayed them. Douglass writes that they immediately knew who the
betrayer was, but he does not reveal who they suspected. The men
are placed in jail. Slave traders arrive to taunt them and size them
up as though to sell them. At the end of the Easter holidays, all the
slaves but Douglass are taken home. Douglass remains in jail because
he is identified as the leader and instigator. He begins to despair.
At first, Thomas Auld announces his intent to send Douglass to Alabama.
Then Auld suddenly changes his mind and sends Douglass back to Baltimore
with Hugh Auld.

In Baltimore, Hugh Auld apprentices Douglass to a shipbuilder named
William Gardner. Douglass is to learn the trade of ship caulking.
Because Gardner’s shipyard is struggling to meet a deadline, however,
Douglass becomes a helping hand for seventy-five different carpenters
and learns no new skill. The carpenters -constantly summon and yell
at Douglass, who cannot help them all at once. Tensions at the shipyard
increase when the white carpenters suddenly strike to protest the
free black carpenters who Gardner has hired. Gardner agrees to fire
the free black carpenters. As an apprentice who is not free, Douglass
continues working at Gardner’s, but he endures severe physical intimidation
from the white apprentices.

One day, four white apprentices attack Douglass at the
shipyard and nearly destroy his left eye. He starts to fight back
but decides against it, as lynch law dictates that any black man
who hits a white man may be killed. Instead, Douglass complains
to Hugh Auld, who becomes surprisingly indignant on Douglass’s behalf.
Auld takes Douglass with him to see a lawyer, but the lawyer informs
them that no warrant may be issued without the testimony of a white
man.

Douglass spends time at home recovering, and later he
becomes an apprentice at Hugh Auld’s own shipyard. Douglass quickly learns
caulking under Walter Price and soon earns the highest possible
wage. Each week, Douglass turns over all his wages to Hugh Auld.
Douglass compares Auld to a pirate who has a “right” to Douglass’s
wages only because he has the power to compel Douglass to hand them
over.

Analysis

The second half of Chapter X continues to shift between
personal accounts and public arguments against slavery. Douglass
moves from the personal account of the rest of the year under Covey
to a general analysis of the “holiday” that slave owners give their
slaves between Christmas and New Year’s. Generally, the public,
or persuasive—sections of the Narrative generally
either disprove pro‑-slavery arguments, present antislavery arguments,
or disabuse readers of misinformation or misinterpretation about
the practices of slave owners. Douglass’s analysis of the holiday
time falls in this last category. To the uninformed observer, it
would appear a positive thing that slave owners grant a holiday
to their slaves. Douglass explains, however, that this seeming benevolence
is part of the larger power structure of slavery. Slaveholders use
holiday time to make their slaves disaffected with “freedom” and
to keep them from revolting.

The figure of William Freeland stands in direct contrast
to the rest of the slave owners in Douglass’s Narrative. Douglass’s
previous masters have all shared one or both of two traits: hypocritical piety
or inconsistent brutality. Douglass presents Freeland as a good slave
owner because he lacks both of these vices. Freeland has no pretensions
about religion and is consistent and fair in his treatment of his
slaves. However, though Freeland is a good model for a slave owner,
Douglass remains clear that slaveholding in any form is still unjust.
He points to his dissatisfaction with Freeland in a pun on Freeland’s
name. Instead of equating “Freeland” with “free land,” Douglass
uses the pun to point out that belonging to “Freeland” is not as
good a guarantee as living on “free land.”

Douglass’s experience under Freeland is also positive
because he develops a social network of fellow slaves that during
this time. Except for his friendship with the local boys in Baltimore,
Douglass has been a figure of isolation and alienation in the Narrative. As
an isolated figure, he appropriately resembles the protagonist of
a traditional coming‑of‑age story. These autobiographical stories
tend to privilege a model of heroic individualism over social interaction
and support. In Chapter X, however, Douglass reveals the close friendships
he develops at Freeland’s and shows that he relies on friends’ support.
This model of social support competes with the model of heroic individualism
through the end of Douglass’s Narrative. For example,
Douglass’s first escape attempt involves several people and fails,
whereas he presents his successful escape as the act of an individual.

In their prefaces to Douglass’s Narrative, Garrison
and Phillips place Douglass in the context of the American Revolutionaries’
battle for rights and freedom. Douglass himself uses this context
in Chapter X when he specifies that escaping slaves act more bravely than
Patrick Henry did. Douglass alludes to Henry’s famous declaration,
“Give me liberty or give me death.” While Henry faces a choice between
political independence and oppression, escaping slaves must choose
between two unattractive options—the familiar ills of slavery and
the unknown dangers of escape. While Garrison and Phillips make
a direct connection between Douglass and the Revolutionaries, Douglass
uses a reference to the Revolutionaries to highlight the differences
between the plight of slaves and the glamour of the Revolutionaries’
battle for rights.

For Douglass, the difference between the Revolutionaries
and slaves is widened by the fact that slaves do not benefit from
the citizen’s rights for which the Revolutionaries fought. When
four of Gardner’s white apprentices attack Douglass, Douglass enjoys
neither the right to defend himself nor the right see his attackers
punished for their crime. Douglass ironically portrays his master
Hugh Auld as naïvely surprised and indignant upon hearing the lawyer say
that a slave has no right to stand witness against a white. The irony
with which Douglass writes of American “human rights” in theory
and in practice also seems present in the Narrative’s
subtitle, An American Slave. The Narrative goes
on to show that the words “American” and “slave” are contradictory:
the rights afforded by the designation “American” are nonexistent
for slaves.

In Chapter X we see Douglass working for wages for the
first time. Previously, his labor translated into invisible profit
for his masters, but when he begins apprenticing at shipyards, he
begins to receive the monetary value of his labor. Douglass must
must turn over these wages to Hugh Auld each week, however. The
physical presence of the money Douglass earns with his labor reinforces
his sense of the injustice of slavery. Hugh Auld comes to resemble
a thief who steals what is not his, rather than an owner of property
by which he profits.

Yes, I am a teen myself, and if you HAVE to read this, then do so, but if you don't have to, then don't read it...it is incredibly boring...I had to read it for my English class...horrible book...unless you like narratives...then to you...ENJOY!!! It is hard to understand in some parts, but if you have ever read Fahrenheit 451, then it's about that bad...

No doubt, I thought it was gonna be super boring and I was gonna hate it, but to the contrary, I actually REALLY liked it. It's something I can read, and it doesn't take too long to read either. If you actually like history, and like to read about the stuff you won't find in a textbook, then this narrative is worthwhile.